Peacetime, When My Voice Shall Be Light
by burnmedown
Summary: Team Bravo, plus children, engage in a ruthless water balloon war. When an unexpected minor injury occurs, Trent finds himself struggling to separate past horrors from present peace.


Here's my fic for day four of SEAL Team Week.

Prompts used: Trent, team bonding

**Warning** for flashback memories of somewhat graphic violence, including severe injury to a child and the death of a pregnant woman.

Title from _Apology for Apostasy?_ by Etheridge Knight

* * *

The battle turns into an absolute massacre, with not a single participant escaping unscathed.

Oh, it doesn't start out that way. At first there's lots of hiding and sneaking around and tactical whispering. Clay goes high somewhere and starts targeting people with cold-blooded sniper precision, the little shit, though Trent notices he does go easy on the kids.

Eventually, the children - Mikey, Jameelah, and Sonny, who counts as a child - get tired of all the subtlety and restraint, and make a unanimous break for the two huge tubs of water balloons Ray placed on either side of the battle line drawn with Silly String. That starts a wild free-for-all, with everyone abandoning cover, scrambling for ammunition, and getting pelted by everyone else. Once things really step off, even Clay comes down from wherever he was hiding (probably somewhere in the big spreading tree that overhangs the yard) and jumps right into the middle of the fray.

There's absolute pandemonium for a while, all original allegiances and battle lines forgotten. As the tubs start to empty out, combatants scatter wildly across the battlefield in search of the small stashes of extra water balloons Ray hid here and there like Easter eggs.

Fluid new truces form rapidly. Sonny convinces Mikey to help him pummel Clay, who by this point is laughing too hard to fight back very effectively. Across the yard, Lisa and Naima gang up on Blackburn, who lets out a distinctly undignified yelp when one of the balloons explodes right in the middle of his back, soaking his shirt with startlingly cold water.

(Trent is about 90% sure Ray stuck the damn balloons in the refrigerator for a while before bringing them out.)

Jameelah has been holding her own with impressive skill, using her small size to her advantage, ducking and weaving and taking cover behind whatever's available, then popping up just for an instant to lob a balloon at a chosen target. Trent judges that she's nowhere near wet enough yet, so he deliberately focuses on her, ignoring Mandy's triumphant laughter after tagging him in the shoulder.

The next time Jameelah pops up, Trent explodes a balloon directly in front of her, showering her neck and chest with icy water. She squeals, shrieks with laughter, and disappears again. His objective achieved, Trent turns to address the Mandy issue, because she shows no sign of picking a new target for her barrage.

And that's when Jameelah starts screaming.

There's a split second where Trent almost thinks he must be imagining it, because screams don't belong here. This is home. Home is safe.

But the wailing doesn't stop, and Trent knows that voice. He's known Jameelah Perry's voice since the day she came home from the hospital.

Something is wrong.

He's the nearest to her, and it takes him only an instant to snap out of the shock and get moving. He feels like he's trying to run through tar, like it takes forever to round the edge of the parked truck she was sheltering behind.

Jameelah is lying on the ground, surrounded by the colorful spheres of unbroken balloons. She's got one knee drawn up toward her chest, face screwed up in pain, eyes squeezed tightly shut as she-

_...reaches down toward the raw mess of tattered flesh where her lower right leg used to be. The child's eyes are open wide, staring toward a gray, smoke-filled sky. As Trent kneels beside her, grimacing at the bright red spurt of blood, the little girl gasps and wails. She keeps looking straight up at the sky, which is good._

_If she doesn't glance down, maybe she won't panic. Maybe the shock will dull the pain. Give her a few more precious minutes of not understanding what has happened here._

_She's so small. Six years old, maybe, or seven; Trent isn't the best judge of children's ages._

_He talks to her, voice gentle and even, trying to keep her calm while he applies a tourniquet to control the bleeding. Her jeans are tattered, mostly blown away, but there are still tiny embroidered flowers visible on the denim._

_The little girl draws a hitching, shattered breath and manages to shape her incoherent wailing into a single repeated word._

Ammi.

_She's calling for her mama._

_Trent glances up, his gaze catching briefly on the dead woman lying half buried in rubble a couple yards away, her eyes open and staring, arms still curled protectively over the curve of her belly._

_The child keeps crying - _Ammi, Ammi _\- but her mother will never hear._

_He reaches down and-_

...carefully eases Jameelah into a sitting position, arm beneath her back. He blinks away phantom smoke. Breathes through his mouth to try to banish the acrid smell of explosives and burnt meat. Looks down at Jameelah, who is crying more quietly now, digging her fingernails into her leg just above the badly skinned knee.

The injury isn't major, nothing that will require an ER visit. She just fell and scraped her leg on the asphalt. The screaming caught Trent off guard in part because Jameelah Perry has never been much of a crier; she's a tough little girl, more prone to gritted-teeth stoicism than outbursts of emotion.

The knee injury does look painful, though. Poor kid ripped most of the top layer of skin off her kneecap, and there are a few small bits of gravel embedded in the raw flesh. It's bleeding a bit, but only very sluggishly.

"It's okay, Meelah. You're okay." Trent keeps his voice level. Tries to ignore the slight trembling in his hands, the disproportionate adrenaline crackling through his veins with nowhere to go.

She's fine. They're home. Everything's fine. He barely even smells the smoke anymore.

In just a couple more seconds, Naima makes it across the yard and takes charge with calm, practiced efficiency. She pulls her daughter into a hug and kisses Jameelah's damp, unruly hair, then orders Ray to go retrieve the Benzocaine spray from the first aid kit in the bathroom.

Within moments, Jameelah's crying has subsided to a few hitched-breath sniffles. She glances up at the crowd that has gathered around her and starts to look embarrassed, dropping her face to hide in the crook of her mother's arm.

Trent takes that as his cue to back off and stand up. He shoots a meaningful glance at Blackburn, who nods slightly, wipes a residual trickle of water off his face, and calls out, "All right, people, listen up! Looks like hostilities have ceased. Let's get to picking up all those balloon pieces."

There are a few faint groans, a few people who seem reluctant to leave Jameelah's side (in particular Jason, who looks like he wishes there were something he could kill for making his goddaughter cry like that), but gradually the crowd breaks up, leaving Jameelah in Naima's very capable hands.

Eager to have a distraction and a way to use up some of that spare adrenaline, Trent throws himself into helping with cleanup. For about 90 seconds, he's able to keep holding out hope that no one noticed his little lapse. Then Sonny materializes at his side and asks casually, "Hey. You all right?"

"Uh, pretty sure I can handle a water balloon fight, Sonny." Trent tries hard to match his teammate's casual, unaffected tone. "I'm fine."

Sonny nods. They both pick up a few more shreds of colorful rubber. Then Bravo Three says quietly, "It's just that you're lookin' a little pale there, medicine man."

His head still buzzing with tension, Trent can't come up with an answer for that, any sort of believable excuse that his teammate won't see right through. He just doesn't say anything, hoping that Sonny will let it go.

He doesn't, of course. Bravo Three can be incredibly stubborn when he wants to be.

"All that screaming call up some bad memories?" Sonny asks softly, sliding over a little bit closer.

Trent squeezes the wadded-up mass of rainbow-hued rubber in his hand like it's a stress ball. He breathes in, out. Then he admits, "Yeah. You could say that."

A glance out of the corner of his eye shows that Sonny is nodding, quiet and unfazed. "Happens to the best of us," he says with a sort of calm matter-of-factness that for some reason puts a lump in Trent's throat.

Some part of Trent is tempted to get defensive, to clarify that he was fine, that he pushed through it, never fully lost track of reality. He bites his tongue because he knows he doesn't need to say any of that, not to Sonny.

Quinn is telling the truth. Getting blindsided by unwanted memories, that's a place they've all been at one time or another. Something they've all had to learn to cope with.

Certain things come back every now and then, no matter how much you don't want them to. It's inevitable when you've seen and done the things they have. When you've spent _years_ seeing and doing the things they have.

(How long ago now was the little girl with the blown-off leg? Eight years? Twelve? She might be grown by now, if she's still alive.)

Sonny stays near Trent for a few more minutes, then gradually drifts away, meandering across the yard until he just happens to end up right next to Jason and Brock. Trent watches as they exchange a few quiet words. He rolls his eyes a bit, but fondness warms his chest anyway.

He already knows how the next few days will go. Texts, calls, invitations to come over and hang out. Brock will probably show up on his doorstep with Cerberus, and they'll both look at him with matching tragic puppy eyes until he agrees to go hiking with them.

His team. His _family._ God, he's lucky to have this little tribe of annoying, overprotective dumbasses.

After cleanup is over and people have started to leave, Ray comes over to talk to Trent. Judging by the concerned dad expression Bravo Two is wearing, the rest of the team has let him know what went down.

"Brother, you think you could hang out with Jameelah and RJ for a little bit?" Ray asks. "Me and Naima need to take her mom home."

Of course Trent sees straight through the flimsy pretext. He immediately agrees anyway.

Jameelah's knee has been cleaned, disinfected and bandaged, and she looks almost back to her normal bright-eyed self. At some point she must have changed out of the wet clothes, because now she's wearing a summer dress covered in a pattern of tiny flowers.

Trent settles on the couch next to her and is quickly drawn into a spirited discussion about exoplanets. Jameelah has recently entered her astronaut phase; dinosaurs are old news now. She's absolutely determined that she's going to work for NASA someday.

RJ demands horsey rides, then makes a game of tumbling off again and again, shrieking with laughter every time he crashes to the carpet in a tangle of chubby limbs.

A little bit at a time, the residual adrenaline-rush tremors leave Trent's hands, and the knot in the pit of his stomach eases up until he can hardly tell it was ever there at all.

After the horsey game finally gets old, RJ goes to retrieve a favorite book. While Jameelah scoffs that it's a _little kid_ book, she also doesn't hesitate to snuggle up at Trent's other side to listen once he starts reading.

He recites the words on autopilot, grounding himself to the here and now by focusing on sensory information: the lingering scent of the cupcakes Naima baked earlier in the day; the warmth of the children pressed up against his sides; the soft, gentle not-quite-quiet of a summer day with birds singing and fans running.

He's home. Everyone is safe.

Everything is just fine.


End file.
